


it's christmas time in the city

by orphan_account



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie-centric mostly, M/M, Post-Movie, christmas series, nothing but fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12967887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eddie and Richie's relationship during the holidays throughout the years.





	it's christmas time in the city

**Author's Note:**

> i have been trying SO HARD to get this thing out i'm just throwing the first chapter right at all of you. DONE.
> 
> this is just a little something i wanted to do for the holidays. the pennywise stuff happened and everything, it starts a year after the events of the movie, but no one really remembers it because who has the time to deal with him. 
> 
> there's also some mike/bill way early on here if you squint.

Eddie is fourteen years old and he feels lost. It's not an unusual feeling, ironically, with his knack for directions in a more literal sense. It's one he's grown used to, maybe always been accustomed with his entire life. It's the feeling of waiting for an alarm to go off telling him to take pills he doesn't need anymore, never needed. The absence of his inhaler when he reaches for it. The way he tries to remember last summer only to come up with a few hazy memories. Falling, a broken arm. A girl named Beverly- _Bev_ -who moved away. The overwhelming, suffocating feeling of fear, fear, _fear-_

Only it's not always so awful.

Sometimes feeling lost is just a part of the little things. Feeling lost when he realizes he’s eaten the last piece of his favorite candy. Turning the TV on only to see it’s just a rerun, not anything new, for _DuckTales_. The time he'd offered to help Bill fix up Silver after a particularly nasty fall and he told him no, _"Mike's g-going to come over later to luh-look at it"_ and his feelings were hurt so badly he refused to consider it hadn't been about the bike at all.

Today it falls into the not so awful category. The field they're in isn't what makes the feeling hit him. It isn't the trees surrounding them either, or the way Eddie can't find a single decently sized tree he likes.

"You made me walk all the way out here," he'd said to Richie earlier, "to look at _trees._ "

"Well I'll say. Not just any trees, 'ol chap! Christmas trees!"

That's where the lost feeling comes from. It's in the way Richie's face had been practically glowing when he announced they were picking out a tree for him to take home, the way Eddie instantly understood why he'd feel the need to do such a thing; the knot forming in his stomach, something he found happening much more often around Richie, a more than constant reason for the feeling lately.

He couldn't even bring himself to comment on how Richie's British guy wasn't getting any better. Not when he's sure no one has ever done something so subtly thoughtful for him before in his life.

In the wake of last summer, there is at least one thing he can remember clear as a day. Learning his mother had lied to him his whole life. Even with a year passing and Eddie learning how to act around her, how to _exist_ in the same house as someone who could do something like that to him, things aren't the same. Things, he knows, won't ever be the same.

For the most part he's okay with it. Only it's been harder since the holidays have rolled around and Eddie can barely even make conversation with his mom about what he wants for Christmas, much less whether or not they'll be putting up a tree together like always (they won't, he already knows that, he _knows_ ). He doesn't have to ask to know if they'll be following any of their usual Christmas traditions for the year.

Because that's the thing- for every lie she'd told him, every fear she drilled into him, she's still his mother. It's easy to be angry and feel betrayed, but it isn't so easy to miss her. Especially when Eddie passes her every day in the living room, glued to her TV, not bothering to ask him what he did with the Losers anymore. Or when he sees her in the kitchen and she doesn't ask if he wants a grilled cheese, the crust cut off the way he likes.

Some days it's enough to make him want to say _"I'll do it, I'll take the pills again, I'll pretend and I'll lie and be exactly the kind of son you want me to be just please stop looking at me like that I'm sorry mommy I'm sorry I'M SORRY-"_

but he comes to his senses quick enough every time. Things are different. _He's_ different. And it's the comforting thought of leaving Derry one day, driving far far away from the fear, the lies and guilt and the muddled memories, that helps him remember it's for the best. Even when it comes to breaking Christmas traditions he's followed for his entire life.

"This is impossible." Eddie, despite his appreciation for the whole tree thing, gives up quick either way. "There's no fucking _way_ we'll find a tree that's gonna fit in my room. And why would I want an actual tree in there anyway? We don't ever get _real_ trees. Do you know how many house fires start from trees or what if it like attracted bugs or some weird shit what would I do then how do you get rid of TREE LICE?"

Instead of answering any of his well thought out questions, Richie says, "Who do you like?"

It catches Eddie so off guard the scowl on his face almost immediately falls. "What?" he says, or at least that's what he means to say. Instead it comes out like a quick "Whahuh?"

"You know, who do you like. Who would you get a woody for?" Richie gestures towards a nearby tree trunk, like it's an example.

"Uh," Eddie says. He keeps saying that for a few beats, just a long drawn out _"uhhh"_ until he finally settles on "I don't know. Why?"

"Was just askin', that's all." Richie's suddenly very quiet. He's never quiet.

It makes Eddie suddenly _want_ to have an answer.

"I like the guy in _Die Hard_." He starts pacing around the circle of trees, his prior worries mostly forgotten. "He was kinda cool. Or, you know, Fred in _Scooby Doo_? He's cool too, he's always got a plan and he's the leader so like he's smart and stuff-"

Richie suddenly cuts in with, "Those don't _count_. I mean the other kind of like. You wouldn't get a woody for fucking Fred of all people, would you?"

"Well no but-"

"Holy shit, wait." Richie's face lights up in understanding. Eddie blanches. He's said too much, let a little part of himself show too clearly and now Richie's going to laugh at him and leave him to die alone surrounded by stupid lice infested trees or whatever. And he does laugh, only it's for a different reason than Eddie expects. "You would! God Eds, what is it? The ascot? Is that what does it for you, that's what wakes _little Eds_ up in the morning?"

"Shut up! Shut up and stop calling me that!" Eddie's face is burning when he shoves Richie but at least it's just the thought of having a crush on Fred Jones he finds funny. Not that it's Fred instead of Daphne.

The conversation drops after. Richie goes back to looking at all the trees, probably trying to decide which sad and misshapen one would look best in Eddie's room. Earlier Eddie had been pondering on the cluster of trees, how they looked small and strange and out of place, not quite right. Sort of like how everything in Derry felt. Only now all he can think of is Richie's question.

He didn't act weird about the whole Fred thing. Or how Eddie can't help but only think of guys when asked such a question, no matter what sort of _like_ he might have meant. The way it had been brushed off, made fun of but only in the same way it would be by Richie if he'd said any other cartoon girl. It makes Eddie feel more confident than usual. It would feel good, for once, to breathe.

"Bill." He says it before he can think too hard on it.

"What?"

Eddie says it for a second time. Then offers in explanation, puffing his chest out, "Bill's a real person. He counts and I like him. Happy?"

It's true, even with Bill just being a sort of test for him. He does like Bill-or did like him-in that different sort of _like_ way. Bill with his warm smile and the way he made Eddie feel like he could do almost anything. He's always understood how people could just look at Bill and think they'd fallen a little in love, because he's felt that way too before. A crush, he guesses now, but that's really all it had ever been. He's not sure when his admiration and awe for Bill turned into a solid knowing of _just a best friend,_ but either way it's a good answer. Because that's all it is: a test.

He's already turned away so he doesn't have to look at Richie, pretending to stare down the trees again. He doesn't quite hear when Richie mutters something. It would be easy to keep staring down the trees, looking at them like they would either swallow him whole so he'd never have to face anyone again or like just staring would make him and his answer normal.

Once he decides he can't take it anymore Eddie turns back around. Richie looks _upset,_ he realizes.

"I shouldn't have told you that, I didn't really mean it. It was just a dumb joke you know? Marie's my real answer, you know the girl from Math class, she wears her hair in pigtails a lot and probably doesn't realize she's going to be balding by the time she's thirty you know like that's _really_ bad for your scalp she shouldn't wear them up so tight all the time-"

"I thought you'd say me." Richie's voice is low amidst his fast rambling so it takes Eddie a second to realize what he's saying.

"What? What do you mean?"

Richie kicks at a rock. "If you were going to say any of us. I thought you'd, you know, say me. I guess."

Eddie waits for a punch line that never comes. Suddenly it's like he can't breathe again, but he's not feeling so lost right then anymore at least.

"Oh. Shit. Fuck. Did you _want_ me to say you?"

That's how the two of them end up spilling all of their dumb stupid feelings, and really, Eddie knows it could be worse. He doesn't even care if they're in the middle of nowhere looking for some impossibly small room sized tree because he's getting to hear Richie say he _like_ likes him. He gets to tell him he doesn't really like Bill that way (doesn't mention the word _anymore_ when he does), just wanted to see how Richie would take it, didn't want him to hate him.

It's not even that much of a surprise. He knows things have been different with Richie for the past year. Or, well, maybe not _different,_ but... stronger. Like there's a little something more in each joke, each time they touched or laughed or spent time alone together without the rest of the group. Eddie figures it might feel that way only now because for so long he hasn't bothered trying to look harder into what he and Richie have, maybe both from being afraid and because he never felt like he entirely needed to.

At least it's in the open now, Eddie thinks.

He gets to hear the things he's only let himself think of far, far in the back of his head from time to time. Things that make their way out late at night when Eddie can't help it and he wishes so badly for it it almost hurts. Richie liking him. Him liking Richie. He even gets to hold Richie's dumb hand when they leave, a bold move on his part, when they decide to go for a more sensible mini store bought tree instead. He also gets to use said hand to smack Richie's arm when he says "Thank _god,_ that field was starting to get itchier than the time your mom gave me syphilis."

They don't hold hands while in the store, or when they pick out their own respective ice cream snack from the store's freezer, but that's okay. Eddie ignores the feeling of being watched or stared at or the worry he has of people just being able to suddenly read the word _GAY_ radiating from him when he stands too close to Richie. It's okay because once they get to his house, walking past his mother in the living room without a word of explanation, Eddie can grab his hand as much as he wants in the comfort of his own room.

They decide to set the small tree on the desk next to Eddie's bed. Richie's allowance could only afford the tree and a few cheap string ornaments, so it looks a little empty and silly, like it's out of place but not in the way the Derry trees in the field had felt. Eddie loves it.

"So this was like a first _date,_ huh?" Richie coyly asks him over his Fudgesicle (originally the ice cream Eddie had picked out for himself, but Richie switched with him last minute when he'd decided he wasn't in the mood for that kind anymore).

"Probably," Eddie adjusts one of the ornaments, a small silver bell. "We've been going on first dates for forever, so. Yeah."

The knot in his stomach only grows when he looks over at Richie and sees just how much he's beaming. He looks so silly, so happy, so Richie-like that Eddie almost doesn't notice the ice cream smeared on the top of his lip.

"Come here." Rolling his eyes, Eddie grabs a napkin from the pile he'd knew he would need with Richie having such a snack in his spotless room. "You have ice cream all over your face! You're fourteen, don't you know how to eat it right yet? Don't get any of it on my floor or I swear I'll kill you, RICHIE STOP FIDGETING let me get it off I don't want it on my carpet!"

Eddie starts to clean the ice cream off him and stops only when he's noticed Richie isn't trying to fight him back like usual or throwing any objections his way. He's still just looking at him with that dopey look, like ranting about ice cream carpet stains makes him the best person ever or whatever shit, so Eddie can't possibly help it when he leans in and brushes his lips against Richie's. It's soft and quick because at fourteen himself that's all he can think to do.

He doesn't even have the time to regret it, not when Richie's kissing him too and that's what they do for a little while. Just short, random kisses like they're both testing it out and deciding how it works and Eddie finds that he likes doing it very, very much. Even when it results in Richie's glasses bumping into his face a few times or ends in the both of them having a paper napkin war.

"You know," Richie says once Eddie starts to toss the napkins away. "I think Lil' Shit looks even better than Mrs. K's tree work."

"What did you just call my tree?"

"Well you have to give it some kind of name!"

Eddie rolls his eyes and tosses the last napkin away. He sits beside Richie where he's leaned back, staring at the tree thoughtfully.

"...Yeah. Okay. Fine."

"I mean it though. Lil' Shit's a real work of art! He looks just right in your room too, not too short, almost as long as my-"

"If you say your wang I'll never kiss you again."

Looking appalled, Richie insists, "You can't _not_ kiss someone when there are Christmas trees around!"

Even with the exasperated way Eddie reminds him that's _mistletoe_ , not Christmas trees, he's not slick- there's an almost overwhelming feeling of affection and relief that rushes over him. It almost gives him whiplash to think of how they'd gone from a normal morning to a still pretty normal evening but different in every way all the same.

Feeling lost sometimes and breaking traditions isn't always so bad, Eddie decides that day.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr if you want to come fic talk or just cry about these two in general with me:
> 
> eddiewearsgucci.tumblr.com


End file.
